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Thread: What are the most sold Disco 12"?

  1. #1
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    What are the most sold Disco 12"?

    Does anyone know what would be the 5 or 10 most sold Disco 12"???

  2. #2
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    Nobody has even a small idea? :cry:

  3. #3
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    Re: What are the most sold Disco 12"?

    Quote Originally Written by Com King
    Does anyone know what would be the 5 or 10 most sold Disco 12"???
    Actually I don't know 5-10 most sold, but maybe one of them could Knock On Wood by Amii Stewart, it was sold over 8 million copies worldwide.

  4. #4
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    bet it would be hard to get that information

    because so many disco labels have gone under. But I remember the first one I bought was Double Exposure's "Ten Percent" (it still gives me a thrill). And my all time favorite 12 inch is Barbara Pennington's "24 Hours a Day". The strings and horns are trance-like, and all the false endings are such a tease! If I could find that on a commercially available CD (the 12 inch version, I mean) I'd pay any price. It sits behind "Hot Shot" as my favorite recording by a disco female artist.

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    Re: bet it would be hard to get that information

    Quote Originally Written by ol'skinflint
    And my all time favorite 12 inch is Barbara Pennington's "24 Hours a Day". The strings and horns are trance-like, and all the false endings are such a tease! If I could find that on a commercially available CD (the 12 inch version, I mean) I'd pay any price.
    I was disappointed when I got my hands on the 12". When I saw the running time I thought 'cool - 9 minutes of pure bliss', but it's really just 4 minutes edited in repeats that extend it into 9 minutes. Some parts just drag on because you can tell its the same 4 or 8 bars over and over again. But the song itself is really great. After that, my favorite song from the album it came from was 'All Time Loser'.

    Disco Funk

  6. #6
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    I don't know if it is the biggest seller, but whenever I pick up an unwanted collection of 12"'s, look through a charity shop's or car boot sales there's always a copy of "Shame" - Evelyn Champagne King lurking!! :o

  7. #7
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    I was disappointed when I got my hands on the 12". When I saw the running time I thought 'cool - 9 minutes of pure bliss', but it's really just 4 minutes edited in repeats that extend it into 9 minutes. Some parts just drag on because you can tell its the same 4 or 8 bars over and over again. But the song itself is really great.
    That is because you are not supposed to play the entire 12"
    In most cases the 12" is a tool for mixing. Various aspects of the song are presented on the 12" and even extended for the purpose of creating a mix for dancing on the dancefloor. A mix that may contain portions of over 200+ 12" records during a set on any given night.

    Why some people do not understand this is confusing to me. I am one of the youngest people on here and I have known this for as far back as I can remember. If you just want the original song well then just buy the LP.

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    Quote Originally Written by Spellbound
    I was disappointed when I got my hands on the 12". When I saw the running time I thought 'cool - 9 minutes of pure bliss', but it's really just 4 minutes edited in repeats that extend it into 9 minutes. Some parts just drag on because you can tell its the same 4 or 8 bars over and over again. But the song itself is really great.
    That is because you are not supposed to play the entire 12"
    In most cases the 12" is a tool for mixing. Various aspects of the song are presented on the 12" and even extended for the purpose of creating a mix for dancing on the dancefloor. A mix that may contain portions of over 200+ 12" records during a set on any given night.

    Why some people do not understand this is confusing to me. I am one of the youngest people on here and I have known this for as far back as I can remember. If you just want the original song well then just buy the LP.
    Not all 12"s mixes were created equally. I do understand the belief that the 12" mix was not necessarily intended to be listened through entirely. As far as I'm concerned, producers who created a limited mix by just repeating the single or LP mix rather than doing a full remix from the original master tapes were lazy. For every 12" created in the manner of the Barbara Pennington 12", there were dozens that musically sounded good from beginning to end. Just because a song was 8 or 10 minutes long didn't mean it had to be monotonous through long stretches of the song.

    Disco Funk

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    Quote Originally Written by Disco Funk

    Not all 12"s mixes were created equally. I do understand the belief that the 12" mix was not necessarily intended to be listened through entirely. As far as I'm concerned, producers who created a limited mix by just repeating the single or LP mix rather than doing a full remix from the original master tapes were lazy. For every 12" created in the manner of the Barbara Pennington 12", there were dozens that musically sounded good from beginning to end. Just because a song was 8 or 10 minutes long didn't mean it had to be monotonous through long stretches of the song.

    Disco Funk
    My thoughts exactly. This is a big problem with remixes today -- every song is padded out to 10+ minutes because the intros and outros are longer than the original song. To me, the best mixes are the ones that work both in a mix and by themselves.

    I seem to recall that for a while in the late 80s and early 90s, there was a thing that some producers were doing where the DJ promo version of the song would be the same as the commercial 12", except that the promo would have an extra minute or two of drums tacked on at the beginning of the track. This bit served no musical purpose and didn't add to the song, but it helped DJs mix the record and ensured that the proper "start" of the song would be heard.

    Nowadays, it seems that every remix has a three-minute intro, a two-minute breakdown, and a three-minute outro, none of which are actually intended to be heard.

  10. #10
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    Hey Spellbound, I'm 30 years old and I do try to get 12" mixes on CD from time to time. Some are great like Stephanie Mills "Whatcha gonna do with my lovin'" and some are dubby and just sound whack when as you said are played from start to finish.

    As a collector, I mostly want the longest version of the song without sounding dubby. Usually the Lp version is sufficient. But its not always the case as in the aforementioned track. If there's additional music and not just repeats, I strongly want it. Its expensive experimenting if you don't know what you are buying. Two recent 12" that I was disappointed in were the Mac Band's Roses are red and Windjammer's Tossing and Turning. On the Windjammer track there a genric intro and outro done obviously be someone else. It adds nothing to the song.

    It's a clash of collector culture and DJ cultures. Collector's don't know what's on the CD before buying it.

  11. #11
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    What about "Le Freak" by CHIC? Didn't it set some sort of record for Atlantic?

  12. #12
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    I seem to recall that 'Le Freak' was Atlantic's best selling 12" Disco vinyl track of all time.....unless someone knows better........

  13. #13
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    Isn't the biggest selling 12" Heartbeat by Taana Gardner on West End? Or at least the biggest seller for West End anyway.

    discohunter

  14. #14
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    That would be the biggest seller for West End. It would even compare to the numbers that Le Freak sold.

    Biggest selling 12" that I know of is New Order's Blue Monday 1988 remix. Not really disco though...

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Written by Headlamp
    I don't know if it is the biggest seller, but whenever I pick up an unwanted collection of 12"'s, look through a charity shop's or car boot sales there's always a copy of "Shame" - Evelyn Champagne King lurking!! :o
    Hi Headlamp: I think 'Shame' was the biggest selling 12" in the UK prior to New Order's 'Blue Monday'.

  16. #16
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    Re: What are the most sold Disco 12"?

    Quote Originally Written by pasiq99
    Quote Originally Written by Com King
    10 most sold Disco 12"???
    Actually I don't know 5-10 most sold, but maybe one of them could Knock On Wood by Amii Stewart, it was sold over 8 million copies worldwide.
    Funny this was the one I've had in mind, why, maybe it's because it was one of the 1st 12inchers that I have purchased. What a bomb it was at the time.

  17. #17
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    Karen Young - Hot Shot should be one of the all time best selling 12" It got a worldwide distribution through Atlantic records.

  18. #18
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    Here are some suggestions;

    Blue Monday - New Order
    Biggest selling 12" in the UK and this was withiut the 1988 & 1996 remixes!

    Double Dutch Bus - Frankie Smith
    Sold 2 million the US alone!

    Relax - Frankie
    Must of sold tons!

    I Feel Love - Donna Summer
    With all mixes combined.

    The Breaks - Kurtis Blow

    White Lines - Grand Master Melle Mel etc

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Written by Davicillo
    Here are some suggestions;

    Blue Monday - New Order
    Biggest selling 12" in the UK and this was withiut the 1988 & 1996 remixes!
    The 88 Quincy Jones remixes outsold the original. Why I'll never know. I like a lot of Quincy's production work, but that was the most senseless remix I'd ever heard... until the 90s came along.

    Quote Originally Written by Davicillo
    I Feel Love - Donna Summer
    Wasn't the original 12" promo-only? Also, it was '76, right? I know that no 12" sold over a million until the late 70s.

    M/A/R/R/S "Pump Up The Volume" is probably another candidate, seeing as it was a massive hit, yet there was never a proper LP from the act.

  20. #20
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    I was wondering whether Rapper's Delight was one of the biggest 12" sellers....if not the biggest... so I did a bit of a search and found a long article about it....

    http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary...o01?print=true

    This is the important part:

    "An order for 5,000 records came in off a few plays," says Sylvia (Robinson). "It started getting played all over [the country]. We couldn't press it fast enough—you had to order it and wait weeks for the next shipment." Her memory of pressing more than 50,000 copies a day—enough to outperform even "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)"—is borne out by J. B. Moore, then an ad-sales staffer at Billboard, who remembers how one Queens-based wholesaler mentioned that he alone was shipping 25,000 copies of "Rapper's Delight" per day.

    Only the fact that the Sugarhill Gang's debut single was selling mainly through black mom-and-pop stores prevented it from registering higher on the industry charts. "That record kept little stores alive," says Moore, who reckons that "Rapper's Delight"—a 12-inch single that sold for $2.25 (as against 60 cents for a 7-inch single)—is probably, with adjustments for inflation, the highest-grossing single of all time. Cashbox would make the record No. 4 for the year 1980.

  21. #21
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    Graham, In the UK as I stated, Blue Monday was only availible on 12" in 1983. From 83-88 it sold only on 12" and was in the charts
    for 38 weeks. It certainly didn't sell more than the 88 remix. It was inly then it was released on 7".

    'I feel love' was 1977.

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